UPDATED: DVD Sales - Man oh Man!

October 12, 2008

Update: We have revised Blu-ray sales estimates. Please see below for details.

There were not a lot of new releases to reach the top 30 on the sales chart this week, but what we lacked in quantity, we more than made up for in quality. This is because the first of the summer blockbusters reached the home market. Iron Man topped the charts with 5.12 million units sold and $93.98 million in opening week revenue. Not only is this the best opening of the year, Iron Man nearly took top spot on the yearly chart after just one week in release. It wasn't the only new release to perform well, as Forgetting Sarah Marshall earned second place during its debut with 826,000 units sold and $17.21 million. Sex and the City fell to third place adding 631,000 units / $13.53 million over the week for totals of 2.36 million / $52.09 million after two. Leatherheads slipped to fourth place with just 99,000 units sold, barely ahead of Speed Racer with 98,000 units sold.

The only other new release to chart was Dora the Explorer - Dora Saves the Snow Princess, which placed 13th with 59,000 units sold and $1.06 million in sales.

Moving onto Blu-ray, several records were broken this week, for both individual titles and the format as a whole. Sales flew to their highest recorded levels, climbing 146% from last week to hit $26.8 million. That's 15.7% of the total home market sales revenue, and 13% of the top 20 comparison (and all three of the sales numbers are records). Like last week, this means the catalog titles are outselling the big releases, at least in terms of Blu-ray to DVD ratio. This is amazing since this week we had the best selling single release in Blu-ray history with Iron Man selling an estimated 879,000 782,000 units and generating $23.07 million $20.5 million in sales. This is not only the best opening week sales for a Blu-ray release, it the best selling Blu-ray of all-time. In fact, according to an interview with Jon Favreau, it was able to get there in just two days. Wow.

On a side note, some reports have Iron Man selling 7.2 million units during its first week. However, this is most likely the number of units shipped at wholesale, which includes copies sent to rental chains, those sold at retailers, and units shipped to retailers but unsold so far.

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Filed under: Iron Man, Sex and the City, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Speed Racer, Leatherheads